The place is not unworthy of the wealth of affection and poetic tribute that has been lavished upon it. The old Puritan church records, with their quaint entries about heresies and witchcraft, about ordinations where “four gallons of wine” and bushels of wheat and malt and hundredweights of beef and mutton were consumed, and about funerals conducted with solemn pomp; and the town records with notes about the “Palisadoe” and the Common rights and “the Cowyard” and the building of “The Great Bridge,”--a vast undertaking,--have more than merely antiquarian interest, for they reveal the intelligent and sturdy democracy and broad principles of government upon which the American republic rests. But if these ancient records seem uninviting, let the visitor turn to the annals of the stirring time of the Revolution. General Gage called Harvard College “that nest of sedition.” In that nest were hatched John Hancock, James Otis, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Joseph Warren and many another of the patriot leaders. The town was the abode of many of the leading Tory families, but as early as 1765 the town-meeting voted “that (with all humility) it is the opinion of the town that [Illustration: HOLWORTHY HALL, HARVARD COLLEGE.] the inhabitants of this Province have a legal claim to all the natural, inherent, constitutional rights of Englishmen and--that the Stamp Act is an infraction upon these rights.” And after an argument on the merits of the question it was further ordered “that this vote be recorded in the Town Book, that the children yet unborn may see the desire their ancestors had for their freedom and happiness.” For the next ten years there is scarcely a proceeding in the preliminary debates and contests that led up to open revolution that is not illustrated in the resolutions recorded by the Cambridge town clerk. Vote followed vote, as the restrictive measures of Parliament irritated the townsmen, till at the town-meeting of 1773 it was resolved “that this town--is ready on the shortest notice, to join with the town of Boston and other towns, in any measures that may be thought proper, to deliver ourselves and posterity from slavery.” The 2d of September, 1774, just escaped the historic importance of April 19th in the next year. On that day several thousand men gathered on Cambridge Common and proceeded in orderly fashion to force the resignation of two of His Majesty’s privy councillors, [Illustration: HOME OF LOWELL.]